I was born and brought up in Iran, a beautiful country full of history. I started taking photos at an early age of my life with a Lubitel, a Russian twin lenses camera. Most of my photos in those days were black and white. It was a very nice camera that my parents gave me when I was 15 years old.

I always loved to see images. I remember that I would spend time in the library for hours and hours looking at the different photos in Life Magazine, National Geographic and other photographic journals and books. Also I always loved nature, and the different patterns made in it. I remember because of my Entomology studies, I would spend hours in the laboratory looking into microscopes at those beautiful and perfect structures that God created in those different tiny flowers, plants, tiny nematods, animals and insects. Then after I finished university in Iran, I left to do on my M.Sc. in California, the Golden State. There I was witness to even more of the beauties that nature held in each different moments of time. I remember I was always walking and trying to absorb all the scenes in my mind and memory as well as recording them on film. I forgot to say that I received another precious gift from my parents. That was a Canon camera with a fixed lense (G-III QL17). Then after I finished my studies, I returned to Iran for work. I consider myself an artist photographer.

At present I have a lovely Minolta Dynax 7, Mamiya 7II with few lenses. I still love and adore nature and all aspects of it. As a result I love macro photography, landscape, architecture (old and new), and many other categories like artistic abstracts, travel, people, fashion, and photo journalism.

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Shemr in Red

The Ta’ziyé is the only traditional drama produced by the Islamic world. It is essentially a ritual theatre – a real mourning service – and its form and content have their roots in the religious tradition.A religious play with a tradition linked to the tragic events of the history of Islamism, that puts on the stage the imam Hossein’s martyrdom (grandson of the prophet Mohammed, Ali’s son and second imam of the Scythian), happened in the 7th century A.D. Even if it is Islamic, it is deeply Persian and takes inspiration from that political and cultural heritage.Hossein’s murder and the massacre of Kerbala were the epilogue of a conflict which broke out, soon after Mohammed’s death, to get control over the rising Moslem community and marked the final division of the Muslims in Sunnite and Scythian. The former embraced the ancient Arabian tradition of succession by election, the latter wanted the succession was hereditary on the ground of blood-ties with the Prophet.Since the 10th century, when in Iran and in Baghdad the Scythian Muslims seized the power, the mourning groups of the imam Hossein began their activity in memory of the martyrdom. Since the Safavì age, (15th century) this peculiar kind of staging found inspiration in the epic tales by Siyavash of the ancient Iran.At the beginning of shah Nasserddin’s dynasty in 1906, more than thirty “tekkiyè” were built, these are the places for the Ta’ziè representations. Shah Nasserddin conceived a scene suitable for the theatrical representations and built a place similar to the Albert Hall in London. But as the religious men opposed that plan, he dedicated the place to the Ta’ziè representations. The “state tekkiyè” that many foreigners compared to the arena of Verona, was a three floor round building, 24 metres high with a 60 metres long radius. The actors played the Ta’ziè on a board. The show had no scenery, it was entirely narrative and the performance was enriched by songs and poems. Since that time the group that represents the imam’s family, or the pure souls, wears green dresses, while the generals and Yazìd’s army (Yazìd is the emperor on Islam’s country) wear red dresses, with the aim to help the audience to identify the roles. Red is the symbol of blood and sin, while green is sign of pureness and innocence. Moreover the actors’ dresses are not those of the 6th century, but they belong to the Ghajar age (end of 19th century and beginning of 20th century) when the Ta’ziè stories turned into a written plot.The Olià ( i. e. the members of imam Hossein’s family) sing following the Iranian musical tradition, while the soldiers of Yazìd, Shemr and Ebne Saad don’t sing but express themselves using melodic prose.